Luigi Snozzi

Luigi Snozzi (29 July 1932 – 29 December 2020) was a Swiss architect and university professor. He was a leading representative of the Ticino School of architecture, which achieved international prominence during the 1970s. As an educator, he taught at ETH Zurich and EPFL and became an influential figure in architectural education. His long-term redevelopment of Monte Carasso was a major urban-planning project in his career. In 1993, Harvard University awarded him its Prince of Wales Architecture Prize, and in 1996 he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Biography Luigi Snozzi was born on 29 July 1932 in Mendrisio. From 1952 to 1957, he studied architecture at ETH Zurich before working with the architects Peppo Brivio and Rino Tami. He married the graphic designer Ursula Jenni in 1961 and helped found the Autonomous Socialist Party in 1969. In 1996, he represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.

He received the Beton Architecture Award in 1985 and again in 1993. He died of COVID-19 at the Casa Rea care home in Minusio on 29 December 2020. The statements treated architectural design as inseparable from questions of human responsibility and reflected the political and ethical dimensions of his thinking. Students responded by demonstrating and staging a sit-in in the university president’s office, and the appointment subsequently went ahead.

Snozzi regarded architecture as a public and social undertaking. He maintained that an individual building should form part of its wider urban context and take account of its inhabitants. For a 1970 competition concerning the EPFL campus at Dorigny, Snozzi worked with Mario Botta, Aurelio Galfetti, Flora Ruchat and Tita Carloni. A pergola framed views across Lake Maggiore.

Monte Carasso Snozzi produced a master plan for Monte Carasso in 1977.

As part of the redevelopment, Snozzi converted the former Augustinian convent into a primary school and community centre (1987–1993). He combined modern additions with the existing historic fabric. The convent became a focal point for the wider redevelopment of the village, with new houses and other buildings introduced around it. School and town hall, San Nazzaro (1973–1978) Former Augustinian convent conversion, Monte Carasso (1987–1993) STOA residential complex, Maastricht (1993–2002) Kenneth Frampton subsequently applied the term "Ticino School" to this group of architects. although the architects associated with the movement did not share a single stylistic approach.

Through his designs and teaching, Snozzi shaped a younger generation of Swiss architects, despite completing a relatively small number of buildings. His modernist architecture reflected his belief that buildings should serve both society and the wider urban environment. The first exhibition of his work in Germany was held in Hamburg in 1997. Gallery